Since the time Wordpress has introduced wigetized sidebars customizing WordPress powered blogs became much easier task. With huge amount of plugins and widgets available for free download webmasters can pick and choose what kind of info display on their’s blogs, where to place it on the pages and all that can be done without ever changing the source code or template files. All updates can be done directly from the blog admin panel after you’ve done small modification to your theme.

In the default (Kubrick) theme there is only one widgetized sidebar created and you can see it if you go to “widgets” option in the “Design” section of your WordPress admin panel. You can place unlimited amount of widgets there but the problem is - you have very little flexibility how these blocks will look on the front end. Appearance of all elements are controlled by the same styling options assigned to the ID=”sidebar”.

Here is a simple tutorial how you can create new widgetized zones (I call them “zones” since they do not have to be placed in the sidebar), place them anywhere on the page and have full control over the style of each widgetized zone. (more…)

When creating new website everyone wants to make it unique and pretty. I don’t see any problems with it as long as “beautiful design” does not hurt your website in the long run. There are thousands of designers out there who can create great graphics but have no idea how to make a website:

• user friendly
• search engine friendly

Here are some basic guidelines you should follow to satisfy both - human visitors and search engine spiders.

Let’s start with human visitors…
They are the primary target and will define if your site worth to look at. Your goal is to get them interested from the first visit and willing to come back for more information again and again…

Make your site to load as fast as possible

Two major elements that slow down your website are images and external scripts. Always slice background images to the smallest elements possible and optimize them for web.
If you have more than one script powering up your website, like blog and directory for example - create one common “images” folder and use it for both templates. (more…)

Sometimes I get an inspiration to improve my blog with new element or plugin and that’s where problem starts. Sure I can hard code new snippet directly into template file or spend couple of hours trying to find suitable solution on Wordpress website.

There is a very good chance that feature I want to include on my blog has been already implemented by someone but I have no idea how he named this plugin or which section he posted it in.

Last time I got lucky thanks to the Pixel Shoppe with his recommendations on plugins that I can use with WordPress blog.

They were describing AdSense Manager plugin which supports multiple ad networks and that’s exactly what I was looking for. In addition this plugin gives you full control over ad placements without need to modify styles or source files.

I found more good recommendations on other WordPress plugins, tweaks and template modifications. General tips for bloggers section they have is also interesting read… (more…)

It is becoming more and more popular to include a lot of different widgets on websites, especially blogs to make it look better.

For starters - “Widget” usually is some kind of image, providing statistics or adding interactivity to your site. In most cases it’s powered by java script located on the server of the widget provider. On my site you can see four examples - PayPerPost direct and EntreCard widgets in the gray sidebar, FeedBurner subscribers in the right sidebar and MyBlogLog Latest Visitors in the bottom area of the page.

I don’t see anything wrong with using widgets but some people are taking it to the extreme - they use each and every widget they can find no matter if serves any purpose…

The main drawback with using widgets, like I stated above, it’s hosted on the remote server of widget provider and in many cases - very busy servers. If some of those servers are busy or experience some kind of problems - your own site may freeze or take forever to load.

My advise - before adding any new widgets to your website or blog ask yourself a simple question: is it worth loosing visitors??? Yes this is correct - if your site takes more than 10-20 seconds to load at least half of potential visitors will hit “back” button! (more…)

When designing a layout for your website it is essential to check it in multiple browsers.

Few years back over 90% of web surfers were using Microsoft Internet Explorer but nowadays other browsers fast gaining share of the market. Most popular are Mozilla Fairfox and Opera.

Even Internet Explorer has released new version (IE7) which works much different from the preceding version (IE6).

Layout and styles configured to work fine in IE may appear all broken or not readable in other browsers. I can guarantee - no one will open another browser just to see your site, so you will loose potential customer.

Multiple browsers can be easily installed on your computer without any interference with exception of IE versions - you can have only one version running.

This is even more important if your site has anything to do with web design services. Recently I did some research on local web design companies just to check competition and found very interesting thing… Some of those companies are claiming to be in web design and development business for years and display tons of feedback from so-called happy customers. Amazingly many of their own sites appears to be very poorly styled and appear broken in Fairfox… Would you consider to hire one of those companies to develop your site? I don’t think so!

So… Take your time to make website multi browser compatible or hire someone to do it for you - you will appreciate it later.